Some suggestions, mostly quality of life, obvious things

[Bitty]

In 1.0, our linkshell was full of people. During downtime, we kept growing. We played other games, and alpha/beta. One of our guiding principles is: we never make anyone choose who their friends are. I promised everyone we would not force anyone to choose our free company. Most did. Some did not. Between the ls and fc we now have over 150 members.
To combat this problem we did the following:

Only 1 of character per person in the ls. (This is annoying, and already not enough.)
Encouraged mumble use. (Some have hearing problems.)
Looked at chat programs. (Leaves out PS3 players.)

I can think of 3 soultions:
1) Raise the 128 member linkshell limit.
2) Allow players to join more than one free company.
3) Allow for an add to the game that could echo chat from one chatline to another.

Right now: we have members of our community in our free company only, and members in our linkshell only. There is no one place everyone can talk. Please help!

Personally I think raising the linkshell limit to equal that of a free company would be the best solution.

Both extremely valid and USEFUL points.

While it is understandable that Linkshells are not being changed at all, I would like to offer additional clarification on why I think the above are very valid points. We, who have played this game for a while, have a tendency to gather a wide circle of friends. Linkshells offer a wonderful semi-private chat channel to talk with people we may not get to socialize with otherwise. If the "semi-private" chat channel is limited then so is our opportunities to reach out and be a part of our community. More and more of us have had to turn off our Shout channels, thus limiting our communication even more.

TL;DR - Can we have larger linkshell limits please?

[Okipuit]

Greetings,

As a follow-up to his previous post, User Interface lead Hiroshi Minagawa shares some more insight into methods for addressing the lack of sets for the hotbars.

In yesterday's post, I responded with a comment that was associating the lack of set numbers with the cross hotbar and I didn't talk about the regular hotbar. Sorry about that.

With that said, I'd like to explain a bit about the method we would like to use to address this issue.

We are planning to implement the below macros to address the necessary sets.

For example, if you made sets 1-3 your solo sets, sets 4-6 your party sets, and set 7 as the one you use for various things, by executing the below macros you can switch back and forth between hotbars 1-3 and hotbars 4-6. Similarly, it will be possible to change 4 sets for different applications.

/hotbar copy WHM 1 WHM 7
/hotbar copy WHM 4 WHM 1
/hotbar copy WHM 7 WHM 4
/hotbar copy WHM 2 WHM 7
/hotbar copy WHM 5 WHM 2
/hotbar copy WHM 7 WHM 5
/hotbar copy WHM 3 WHM 7
/hotbar copy WHM 6 WHM 3
/hotbar copy WHM 7 WHM 6

★Don’t forget to turn off the shared settings for hotbars 1-7!
　I was testing this and my hotbars got messed up… (x_x)

With the above macros, you can swap out sets with the push of a button. Also, if you place gear sets for each hotbar group, you can easily switch to solo gear sets.

Next, in regards to eliminating the issue of not having enough sets, it would be difficult from a memory standpoint to simply increase the number of sets, so how do you all feel about the below method?

Use of the cross hotbar as a back-up hotbar

The data for the regular hotbar (12 spaces x 10 sets) and the cross hotbar information (16 spaces x 8 sets) is saved independently.

It's possible to execute actions from the cross hotbar with the mouse as well, so we can use these to supplement the hotbar. This can be used as a work around for the situation where the hotbar sets are all used up.

You can set this by switching the control mode to gamepad mode and displaying the cross hotbar, and by changing the movement control type to standard, it will be possible to have the cross hotbar displayed in mouse and keyboard mode.

This is only a workaround, and the keyboard shortcuts cannot be allocated for the cross hotbar.

As I said, the above method is only a workaround for the current limitations of the features available and it is not an actual solution for the core issue. If there were a possibility to physically increase the amount of saves and implement a feature that directly links gear set and hotbar set information, we would have to wait until add-on support is available. As we are not at the point in time where I can talk about this as an official feature yet, I will refrain from talking about this further.
　
Method using hotbar #1

As there may be some of you who do not know about this, I'd like to introduce a method to use hotbar #1 to switch out what you use based on the situation.

Hotbar #1 is different from hotbars #2-10 in that it is possible to switch out the set displayed. There is an up/down arrow displayed on the left-hand side that when pressed will change the set displayed.

By using this, you can swap out the actions that are executed with keyboard keys 1-0, -, and = without the keybinds changing.

Let’s say you use set 1 as your solo set and place "Stone" in slot 1, and then use set 2 as your party set and place "Cure" in slot 1.

By changing the set displayed for hotbar #1, you can switch the action executed for press 1 on the keyboard.

This is a great method to address cases where you would like to swap in certain sets for different situations.　

[Shaddix]

Can we just get the ability to select if you want a hotbar vertical or horizontal? I don't like having 6 horizontal and 4 vertical, I would rather have 8 horizontal and 2 vertical.

[Musai]

Greetings,

As a follow-up to his previous post, User Interface lead Hiroshi Minagawa shares some more insight into methods for addressing the lack of sets for the hotbars.

Correct me if I'm wrong but this doesn't sound like a second ui setup but rather switching out hotbars. All of my hotbars are in use. I would like to change the order of priority setup for Cleric Stance (dps) spells vs non-Cleric Stance (healing) spells by being able to have two different ui setups for the two separate stances. Am I reading this wrong?

[Alhanelem]

I don't understand this complictated hotbar switching and copying nonsense. You can fit all of a job's skills + subskills on 3 hotbars, plus some misc. macros. Why would anyone need to do stuff like this? "Different sets for solo vs party" ? As a DPS I more or less use the same skills regardless of whether I'm partying or not (excepting interrupt abilities). Why make your bar setups so complicated?

I have 3 main bars with all my skills on them. First is 1 thru =, second is ctrl-1 thru ctrl-=, third is alt-1 thru alt-= . The skills I use most heavily are on 1 thru 8, I can use my razer naga hex (with 6 buttons on the side and 2 on the top in addition to the standard buttons) and the ctrl or alt keys so I can keep my left fingers on WASD.

That's it. just three hotbars for my skills, and 2 shared hotbars, one for class/job changes and the other for misc. random stuff. I can't imagine why someone would need 8 hotbars for a single class.

[Kikosho]

I didn't see it in the OP but can we get actual numbers for cooldowns instead of the clock swipe we have for the actions not tied to GCD? Whenever certain skills have 10 secs +- left, it's hard to tell if it's actually available or still ticking down.

[Darkshade]

I don't understand this complictated hotbar switching and copying nonsense. You can fit all of a job's skills + subskills on 3 hotbars, plus some misc. macros. Why would anyone need to do stuff like this? "Different sets for solo vs party" ? As a DPS I more or less use the same skills regardless of whether I'm partying or not (excepting interrupt abilities). Why make your bar setups so complicated?I can't imagine why someone would need 8 hotbars for a single class.

I completely agree. My only grump is that "memory issues" i.e. "PS3 ram limitations"s is something coming up more and more.

As both a PC and PS3 player, don't make the mistake this early on of limiting PC/PS4 versions/etc by working only with the lowest common denominator. By all means do your best to make the game playable/enjoyable/convenient on all clients, but don't gimp one because the other can't handle it. Especially this early in the games lifespan.

[Felis]

I completely agree. My only grump is that "memory issues" i.e. "PS3 ram limitations"s is something coming up more and more.

PS3 don't have hotbars

And the numbers of cross-bars are limited to the amount of controller buttons (4 left + 4 right = 8 cross-bars)
But I have read in Reinhearts translation thread that they think about to bring an extra cross-bar by pressing L1+R1 at the same time?

About the Solo set vs. Party set problem, a solution would be to make it possible to move everything also with a text command to the hotbar. Not just the skill actions.
Then we can just write a solo macro and a party macro to refill up the hotbars for every situation.

[Volux]

Greetings,

As a follow-up to his previous post, User Interface lead Hiroshi Minagawa shares some more insight into methods for addressing the lack of sets for the hotbars.

I play on ps3 and pc, and for both I like to use the controller. I use macros for many skills that link together such as a priority based buff macro. Now I love the cross hotbar, but would really like the ability to add a vertical hotbar on my screen that while I may not be able to use with the controller, can have the various abilities listed so I can watch for their cooldowns... Is it possible to do this? I know the ps3 might be more limited but I see no reason the pc can't do this...

[jlatimer11]

But I have read in Reinhearts translation thread that they think about to bring an extra cross-bar by pressing L1+R1 at the same time?

I'd prefer L2+R2 because you already have to use those buttons for either side of the cross bar. This way you just hit the other trigger and you have access to the third.